Third man left standing

From NY Magazine:

The third man of Albany's three-men-in-a-room power bloc isn't going to face any charges. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced in a statement that there is “insufficient evidence” of illegality in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to prematurely dissolve the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption in March 2014.

Cuomo himself had set up the Moreland Commission the preceding June. The investigative body was intended to look into the ways in which “housekeeping accounts,” which state legislators use for administrative expenses (and can accept unlimited donations), were being used. While it was active, the commission issued subpoenas to see how salaries were being paid at the law firms of both Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver, who constituted two-thirds of Albany's infamous troika. By October, Cuomo had been accused of killing a subpoena aimed at his own New York State Democratic Party. The following March, Cuomo suddenly disbanded the commission, saying that stricter anti-bribery laws would accomplish the ethics reform Albany required.

Cuomo’s legal counsel, Elkan Abramowitz, responded to Bharara’s findings: “We were always confident there was no illegality here, and we appreciate the U.S. attorney clarifying this for the public record.”

Cuomo ready to shut down the government over reform

From Capital New York:

Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out a five-point plan to combat corruption in the State Legislature during a speech Monday at New York University, promising to use his power in the state budget process to enact new reforms, even if it means shutting down the government.

“A governor’s maximum leverage, vis-a-vis the Legislature, is the budget process. In that exchange, the governor can effectively say to the Legislature, ‘Either pass my budget, or shut down the government,” Cuomo said, recalling the federal shutdown that occurred during his time working for the Clinton administration. “It was ugly, but sometimes ugly is necessary.”

The governor’s speech comes shortly after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was arrested by federal law enforcement officials and accused of taking millions in bribes and kickbacks as part of his work with two outside law firms. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office is prosecuting the case, said he is continuing to investigate lawmakers in Albany, which he has deemed a “cauldron of corruption."

Asked after the speech if he had “any clue of what was to come regarding Sheldon Silver,” Cuomo denied any prior knowledge.

“Absolutely not,” said Cuomo, whose Moreland Commission probed legislators' finances before it was disbanded. “No one had any clue. I was totally shocked on a number of levels.”

At the heart of Cuomo’s proposals are changes he’s previously presented: the creation of more robust campaign finance restrictions, alongside a public financing system and far greater disclosure of legislators' outside income.

The governor also said he would push for a change to the state constitution that would deprive a convicted public official of a pension, end the use of campaign funds for personal use and curtail legislative “per diem” payments to cover only actual expenses.

NY Times exposes how ethically challenged Cuomo is

From the NY Times:

With Albany rocked by a seemingly endless barrage of scandals and arrests, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo set up a high-powered commission last summer to root out corruption in state politics. It was barely two months old when its investigators, hunting for violations of campaign-finance laws, issued a subpoena to a media-buying firm that had placed millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements for the New York State Democratic Party.

The investigators did not realize that the firm, Buying Time, also counted Mr. Cuomo among its clients, having bought the airtime for his campaign when he ran for governor in 2010.

Word that the subpoena had been served quickly reached Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aide, Lawrence S. Schwartz. He called one of the commission’s three co-chairs, William J. Fitzpatrick, the district attorney in Syracuse.

“This is wrong,” Mr. Schwartz said, according to Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose account was corroborated by three other people told about the call at the time. He said the firm worked for the governor, and issued a simple directive:

“Pull it back.”

The subpoena was swiftly withdrawn. The panel’s chief investigator explained why in an email to the two other co-chairs later that afternoon.

“They apparently produced ads for the governor,” she wrote.

The pulled-back subpoena was the most flagrant example of how the commission, established with great ceremony by Mr. Cuomo in July 2013, was hobbled almost from the outset by demands from the governor’s office.

While the governor now maintains he had every right to monitor and direct the work of a commission he had created, many commissioners and investigators saw the demands as politically motivated interference that hamstrung an undertaking that the governor had publicly vowed would be independent.

The commission developed a list of promising targets, including a lawmaker suspected of using campaign funds to support a girlfriend in another state and pay tanning-salon bills. The panel also highlighted activities that it saw as politically odious but perfectly legal, like exploiting a loophole to bundle enormous campaign contributions.

But a three-month examination by The New York Times found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.

Ultimately, Mr. Cuomo abruptly disbanded the commission halfway through what he had indicated would be an 18-month life. And now, as the Democratic governor seeks a second term in November, federal prosecutors are investigating the roles of Mr. Cuomo and his aides in the panel’s shutdown and are pursuing its unfinished business.

Before its demise, Mr. Cuomo’s aides repeatedly pressured the commission, many of whose members and staff thought they had been given a once-in-a-career chance at cleaning up Albany. As a result, the panel’s brief existence — and the writing and editing of its sole creation, a report of its preliminary findings — was marred by infighting, arguments and accusations. Things got so bad that investigators believed a Cuomo appointee was monitoring their communications without their knowledge. Resignations further crippled the commission. In the end, the governor got the Legislature to agree to a package of ethics reforms far less ambitious than those the commission had recommended — a result Mr. Cuomo hailed as proof of the panel’s success.

While some reports of tension between the governor’s office and the commission surfaced in the news media at the time, the examination by The Times provides the first full accounting of how extensively the governor’s aides involved themselves in the commission’s work and the level of disruption that this caused.

Read the whole thing. You'll fall off your chair.